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THE 



MODEL POTATO 




AN EXPOSITION OF THE PROPER CULTIVATION OE THE POTATO ; 
THE CAUSES OF ITS DISEASES, OR " ROTTING ;" THE REMEDY 
THEREFOR ; ITS RENEWAL, PRESERVATION, PRODUC- 
TIVENESS, AND COOKING. 



JOHN McLAURIN, M . D 



EDITED, WITH ANNOTATIONS, 
By R. T. TRALL, M.D., 

AUTHOR OP "hTDROPATHIC ENCYCLOPEDIA," " HTGIENIO HAND-BOOK," ETC. 



New York: 

3S9 BROADWAY. 



THE 

Science of Health, 

A New First-Class Health Monthly. 

To educate the people in the Science of Life, which inchides 
all that relates to Preserving HEAiiTH and to the Art of 
RETAII7ING Health, is the whole object and purpose of this 
Journal. It will not be the organ of any person, business, or 
institution, but an independent earnest Teacher of the Laws 
OF Life and Health; the exponent of all knov,Ti means 
by which Health, Strength, Happiness and Long Life 
may be attained, by using and regulating those agencies 
which are vitally related to HeaIjTH and the treatment of 
Disease including Air, Light, Temperature, Bathing, 
Eating, Drinking, Clothing, Working, Recreation, Exer- 
cise, Rest, Sleep, Mental Influences, Social Relations, 
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here that Phrenology finds its best and most important field of work. By a 
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designating special aptitude, and indicating the methods by which mental 
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where, and cash commist^ions given. Send P. O. Orderp. Address all letters to 

S. R. WELLS, Publisher, 389 Broadway, New York. 



THE 

MODEL POTATO 



THE 

MODEL POTATO:' 

AN EXPOSITION 



PROPER CULTIVATION OF THE POTATO; THE CAUSES OF ITS 
DISEASES, OR "ROTTING;" THE REMEDY THEREFOR; 
ITS RENEWAL, PRESERVATION, PRODUCTIVE- 
NESS, AND COOKING. 



y BY 

JOHIST McLAUKIJS", M.D. 

EDITED, WITH ANNOTATIONS, 
By R. T. TRALL, M. D., 

AUTHOR OP "hydropathic ENCTCLOP^DIA," " HrGIENlC HAND BOOK,'* 

"WATE-CTJRE FOB THE MILLION," "THE TRUE HEALING ART," 

"diphtheria,"" sexual PHYSIOLOGY," " SEXUAL 

PATHOLOGY," "THE TRUE TEMPERANCE 

PLATFORM," ETC., ETC. 

y 

I 

New York : 

SAMUEL R. WELLS, PUBLISHER, 

889 BROADWAY. 

18'r2. 




■t. 






'7^ , ./^jr^c^v^ 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by 

SAMUEL R. WELLS, 

In the Ofllce of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. 0. 






CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Inteoduction 5 

GENEEAii Propositions 23 

Bad Seed 31 

Bad Seed (Continued) 35 

ViVISEOTION. 39 

DwAEF Planting 50 

AOEICTJIiTURAL ChEMISTBT AND ChEMICAIi MaNURES. . . 53 

Crowded Planting 68 

Deep Planting 73 

Excessive Cotering 78 

Digging Potatoes 83 

Cooking Potatoes 92 

Hygienic Cooking 97 

To the Potato 102 



IIvrTEODUOTIO]^, 

BY R. T. TRALL, M.D. 



Since the year 1845, when the potato-rot first 
appeared, causing a famine in Ireland, and in- 
credible suffering in other European countries, 
the subject of potato- culture has attracted much 
of the attention of farmers throughout the civil- 
ized world ; and as the author of this little work 
has probably been the first to investigate the 
subject in the light of the laws of nature, and has, 
in my judgment, propounded the true theory 
of the diseases of, and remedies for this invaluable 
esculent, a few words in relation to his prepara- 
tion and capacity for such a work, may not be un- 
interesting to the reader. 
Thirty years ago the principle of health reform 



6 Introduction. ' 

was introduced to tte world by that masterly 
work of Sylvester Graham, entitled " The Science 
of Human Life/' Soon after this event a plan or 
system of medicating all diseases by means of 
hygienic agencies (commonly but erroneously 
termed "Hydropathy" or "Water-Cure"), was 
introduced by a German peasant — Vincent Priess- 
nitz, of Graefenberg. Twenty-eight years ago the 
editor of this work opened the first hygienic 
institution in the United States. Twenty years 
ago a health and medical reformation took per- 
manent form and shape in the organization of the 
Hygeio-Therapeutic College, which was a few 
years thereafter chartered by the Legislature of 
the State of New York. 

Health reform and hygienic medication mean 
nothing more nor less than the application of 
the laws of organic life to the preservation of 
health, and the treatment of disease. Their end 
and aim, their maxim and philosophy, are " a 
sound mind in a sound body." The cause is pre- 
eminently religious, for it contemplates uncondi- 



Introduction. 7 

tional obedience to all of God's laws, as mani- 
fested in the organic or the spiritual domain. 

Hygienists are therefore obliged to investigate 
the science of life in its broadest scope ; to learn 
the conditions of health in all their minutiae ; to 
understand the causes of disease in all their com- 
plications, and to search for natural remedies as 
no other persons have ever done, whether sci- 
entists or physicians. And it was for the purpose 
of teaching and disseminating information on these 
subjects among the people, as well as to educate 
men and women as physicians who would cure 
the sick without employing medicines that the 
college aforesaid was established — which, by the 
way, is still in operation, and the only one of the 
kind in existence. 

John McLaurin, the author of the following 
work, came to me as a student, and attending the 
course of lectures of the first college term, gradu- 
ated at the "commencement," He had, by 
reading the "Hydropathic Enclycopedia," the 
"Water-Cure Journal," Graham's Lectures, and 



8 Introdiiction. 

other works on hydropathy, hygiene, and die- 
tetics, become a convert to the hygienic system, 
and entered into the spirit of the health reform 
with zeal and enthusiasm. He came to the col- 
lege, not for the purpose of learning a trade or 
acquiring a profitable business, for these he had 
already, but for the purpose of procuring informa- 
tion that would enable him to be more useful to 
others — more successful in teaching, and, if need 
be, in practicing the principles of the great health 
reformation. 

Soon after receiving his diploma. Dr. McLaurin 
was employed as a missionary to seek a suitable 
location for a proposed vegetarian colony. Kan- 
sas was selected as the most promising territory 
for exploration, and Dr. McLaurin spent several 
months in travelling over the area now known as 
a State. Kansas was then uninhabited, except in 
few and distant places, by white peoj^le. Indians 
and animals constituted the j)rincipal population, 
and even these were only to be found in particular 
" neighborhoods," and were remote from each 



rntrjdiction. • 9 

other. Of course our traveller had a rough time 
of it. Stages were unknown. Hotels were not. 
Houses had not invaded much of the territory, 
and even " shabangs " were scarce. 

After roaming over a good part of the territory, 
camping out in all kinds of weather, exposed to 
rains, winds, sultry heats, and chilling frosts, and 
having accomplished the object of his mission. 
Dr. McLaurin returned to New York. But he 
was utterly demoralized physically. Apparently 
his health was ruined forever. He was thin, pale, 
haggard, coughing severely, and expectorating 
profusely. In short he had confirmed consump- 
tion. 

It did not seem to me possible that he could 
recover, or even live many weeks. I treated him 
for a few days, until he became rested and com- 
paratively comfortable, when he returned to his 
home in Canada. 

A few months after this the patient I had given 
over to death astonished me by walking into my 
office in the image of a well man ! 



10 Introduction, 

It was impossible for health reformers long to 
remain ignorant of the fact that the prevalent 
system of agriculture was abnormal and vicious in 
many respects ; that nearly all kinds of food were 
more or less improper because of improper culture 
or modes of preservation ; that many things grown 
and sold as food for human beings were diseased, 
and consequently unwholesome, and that the 
same laws of organic life whose infraction occa- 
sioned diseases and malorganization in animals 
and in human beings, prevailed in the vegetable 
kingdom : and, when disobeyed, occasioned pre- 
cisely the same disorders and deformities in the 
grains, fruits, roots, and other vegetable produc- 
tions which constitute the proper food of man. 
Hence hygienic agriculture was soon seen to be an 
indispensable factor in the cause of health re- 
form ; for without normal agriculture pure food 
is impossible, and without pure food no one can 
live hygienically, except in a degree. 

At the time that Dr. McLaurin first gave his 
attention to hygiene, the potato disease, or " rot,*' 



Introduction. , 1 1 

which occasioned the " great famine " in Ireland, 
a few years before, was attracting considerable 
attention. The potato- producers were apprehen- 
sive that the crop was about to fail, and the 
potato-consumers were alarmed lest an esculent, 
which has become indispensable to comfort if not 
to health, was about to be annihilated. 

Although many of Dr. McLaurin's co-reformers 
had given this subject of the potato disease much 
attention, none of them had entered upon an 
investigation of the subject systematically and 
experimentally, as he has done. No hygienist 
ever doubted that the essential cause, and the 
only cause, of the deterioration, decay, failure, 
and rotting of the potato was attributable to an 
erroneous method of culture, or preservation, or 
both ; for all hygienists know that all diseases, 
and all imperfections of all living organizations 
are due wholly to unphysiological conditions — dis- 
obedience to vital laws. The only things for them 
to learn were the particulars — the precise ways in 
which health conditions were disregarded, and 



12 Introduction. 

the exact means to be employed to restore those 
conditions. 

After Dr. McLaurm recovered his health, he 
had the good fortune to cure a number of chronic 
invalids, whose cases had long been considered 
desperate, some of whom had been abandoned as 
hopeless by their physicians. These cures were 
accomplished wholly by means of hygienic agen- 
cies, no drugs or medicines of any kind being 
administered in any case. 

Dr. McLaurin, in the honest simplicity of his 
heart, and with motives purely disinterested and 
philanthropic, took pains to explain to the neigh- 
boring physicians the advantages of " Hygienic 
vs. Drug Medication," as illustrated -in the cases 
of the remarkable cures to which he referred, 
expecting probably that he would be applauded 
or at least tolerated for the good he had done. 
But his reception was not so complimentary as • 
he had rightfully hoped. Indeed it was, " on the 
contrary, quite the reverse." Instead of being 
praised for well-doing, he was threatened with 



Intro dtiction. 13 

a criminal prosecution for practicing the Healing 
Art when he was only an irregular physician. 

But the cures he performed, though they 
brought him little fame and less money, rewarded 
him with that which was better than either or 
both ; with what this world can neither give nor 
take away. And they enabled him to reahze 
more intensely the unspeakable importance of a 
life in accordance with the laws of life, in main- 
taining health as well as removing the causes of 
disease, and of ajDplying these considerations 
more practically to the circumstances which de- 
termined the healthy or diseased condition of 
those productions which are employed as food 
for human beings ; and especially to the potato, 
then a subject of much discussion. The result 
had been, a patient, assiduous and elaborate 
research into the causes of its normal growth and 
abnormal conditions, until, finally, he has placed 
in my hands, to be edited and annotated, the 
manuscript which will constitute the substance of 
the text of the following pages. 



14 Introduction. 

Witlim a few years many persons have pro* 
fessed to have discovered the nature and cause of 
the potato disease and the remedy therefor ; but 
a sufficient answer to all of those pretensions is 
the fact that the disease still prevails where the 
remedy has been tried. Like the consumption- 
curers who swarm in the cities and infest every 
village, they do not lessen the statistics of 
disease nor diminish the bills of mortality. 

It requires but a very superficial knowledge of 
physiology, to enable a person to understand 
that no drug or nostrum can ever remedy a 
diseased organism which results from improper 
culture or imperfect preservation. 

It is true that no less than ten different kinds 
of insects that prey on the potato vine, have been 
clearly recognized and minutely described by 
entomologists, and parasitic fungi innumerable 
have been ascertained to infest the plant, yet 
they are not the causes but the incidents of its 
diseases. They are scavengers, and like all 
creatures of that kind, are always present when 



Introduction. 1 5 

organic matter is in a state of impurity or of 
decay. The only protection against insects and 
parasites is health and vigor. 

The potato is peculiar in many respects, and 
this fact is doubtless the source of many errors 
T^hich are prevalent respecting the causes of its 
decay, and the remedial agents or measures 
which have been recommended. And to this 
cause may be attributed the discrepancies among 
authors and agricultural writers respecting the 
proper method for cultivating and preserving it ; 
to say nothing of the conflicting testimonies and 
receipts relating to cooking and eating it. 

No other production cultivated in this country, 
if in any country, is subject to precisely the same 
conditions and influences, nor requires precisely 
the same management as the potato, in the details; 
yet all are governed and controlled by the same 
organic laws and vital principles. I find in 
agricultural journals and books, and in the 
catalogues of seedsmen, as much discordance of 
theory and practice, as I find in the standard 



1 6 Introduction. 

text-books and journals of the medical profession 
with regard to the nature, causes, and proper 
treatment of consumption. 

There is, indeed, an instructive similarity in 
these diseases. The potato disease is exactly- 
analogous to that form of consumption in animals 
and in human beings known as tuberculous. It 
is as really a kind of scrofula, as is tuberculosis; 
and the potato rot is caused by conditions pre- 
cisely analogous to those which induce consump- 
tion and scrofula in human beings, the rinderpest 
in cattle, the pleuro-pneumonia in sheep, the 
glanders in horses, the cholera in hogs, and the 
fatty degeneration in fowls, etc. 

And when the farmer, by applying the principles 
explained by Dr. McLaurin, renovates his potato 
crop, he may, if he pleases, apply the same prin- 
ciples to the renovation and improvement of all 
other crops; and if he chooses he may also extend 
and apply them to the purification and invigora- 
tion of his domestic animals. Nor is this all. 
He may, if he so wills, apply them successfully to 



Introdtiction. i y 

the prevention of all contagious diseases among 
human beings, and, to a great extent, of all other 
maladies. 

Perhaps a few words in relation to my personal 
experience and observation may be a fitting con- 
clusion to these introductory remarks. 

For more than a quarter of a century I have 
been in the constant practice of treating all classes 
of invalids hygienically ; that is, without medicines 
of any kind, and by means of hygienic agencies, 
as aiV, light, temperature, bathing, diet, exercise, rest, 
clothing, sleep, electricity, magnetism, and in short, 
all normal influences. As a large proportion of 
the ills that flesh is heir to are caused by improper 
and unwholesome articles of food, drink, and con- 
diments, while all morbid conditions are aggra- 
vated by them, the dietary constitutes an impor- 
tant feature, and, in many cases, the leading and 
most important feature of hygienic medication. 

I have treated many hundreds of patients for 
months, who were allowed a mixed dietary, reject- 
ing only the more gross forms of animal food, all 



1 8 Introduction. 

complicated dishes, and the more pungent and 
irritating of the articles usually employed aa 
seasonings. I have treated many other hundreds 
on a vegetarian dietary, but permitting the 
moderate employment of sugar, milk, and salt. 
And for ten years past I have treated all classes 
of invalids on a strict dietary, from which all 
condiments were rejected, and even the use of 
sugar and milk (except for infants), discontinued. 

Although my table has been suppHed with a 
variety of breads, pies, cakes, mushes, soups, 
puddings, fruits and vegetables, nothing artificial 
or inorganic has been put in any article of food. 
Nor has any process of cooking been employed 
except boiling, baking, or steaming. Nothing has 
been mixed with or added to any dish or article 
prepared for or supplied to the table, except ^ofi 
pure water and heat. No drink- is allowed at 
meals. 

In adopting a diet so rigidly simple and 
natural, my patients soon acquire an excellent 
appetite ; their dyspeptic feelings and morbid 



Introduction. 19 

cravings ultimately disappear, and their instincts 
acquire a keenness of perceptivity undreamed of 
before, and only appreciated by the unperverted 
child or the unsophisticated animal. With a 
recovery, more or less complete, of the normal 
perceptivities, comes also the power to discrimi- 
nate the intrinsic properties and qualities of all 
alimentary substances ; and the plainest food, as 
unsalted beans, unbuttered rice, unfermented 
breads, unsugared pies and cakes, unvinegared 
cabbage and beets, and unpeppered turnips and 
cucumbers, were eaten with a relish never known 
to the epicure who uses one or several seasonings 
with every kind of food he eats. 

These patients become excellent judges of the 
qualities of the articles set before them; hence 
those who market for such a table must be very 
discriminating in their purchases. They cannot 
use the unripe and ill-flavored fruits, the imperfect 
watery, and unsavory esculents, and the musty, 
or imperfect flour and meal, nor the unsavory 
vegetables, that will go down without difficulty 



20 Introduction. 

when well disguised witli butter, vinegar, pepper, 
salt, mustard, radish, catsup, or Worcestershire 
sauce. 

For several years I have supplied my table with 
berries, tomatoes, green peas, beans, green corn, 
potatoes, and other roots, fresh from the garden 
which I have cultivated for the purpose. And, 
with the fresh and well-matured fruits and 
vegetables, and the keen and discriminating 
appetences of my boarders, I have had an unusually 
favorable opportunity (added to my own personal 
habits) to learn the difference between a good 
and a bad, or a perfect and inferior article of food, 
not only in pleasing the palate, but in satisfying 
the stomach and improving the health. And I am 
satisfied that Dr. McLaurin does not lay any too 
much stress on good or normal food as conducive 
to human health. 

I have also noticed another fact that Dr. 
McLaurin calls attention to, viz., the difference 
between potatoes taken from the ground as soon 
as ripened, and cooked — say in September, and 



Introduction. 21 

those taken from the same field a month or two 
later. The difference in gustatory properties is 
very great, and the difference in nutritive value 
must be correspondingly great ; although tastes 
rendered torpid by stimulating viands, or " seared 
as with a hot iron," by pungent condiments, may 
not appreciate the difference. 

I hope, therefore, that the hygienic culture of 
the potato will prove the initiatory step of a 
general improvement and reformation in all of 
the culinary modes of cultivating the things which 
are to be used for the sustenance of human beings ; 
for health, happiness, and usefulness are intimately 
connected with good digestion, and for this good 
food is indispensable. 

I have placed the notes I have added in 
brackets, so that they may be distinguished from 
the text. 



Hygeian Home, 
Florence Eights, N. J., March 1, 1872. 



[ 



THE POTATO BOOK 



GENEEAL PEOPOSITIONS. 

THE first problem to be solved, in relation to 
the cultivation or propagation of any living 
organism, vegetable or animal, is the conditions 
of its normal development and growth ; in other 
words, how can its health be best promoted and 
maintained ? 

2. This work is an attempt to explain the 
proper method of cultivating the potato, increas- 
ing its yield, improving its quality, preventing its 
diseases, in language so plain and simple, that all 
who are interested as producers or consumers 
of this important esculent, may readily compre- 
hend the theory taught and the practice or art 

deduced from it. 

'23) 



24 The Potato Book. 

3. The potato "rot" has for many years been a 
source of serious apprehension, not only with the 
farmers who raise the crop for market, but also 
with millions of consumers ; and its alarming 
increase in many parts of the United States and 
other countries, has caused well-founded fears 
that the tuber would eventually run out, or cease 
to be useful as food or profitable as an agricultu- 
ral production. Such a calamity would indeed be 
deplorable, for it is not easy to see where a substi- 
tute is to be found. But it is confidently believed 
that this work will afford the necessary informa- 
tion, not only to enable the farmer to arrest the 
process of deterioration, but greatly to augment 
the productiveness of the potato, while he restores 
its quality to its original perfection. 

4. Until the potato is treated more rationally 
than hitherto, and limited to latitudes more 
natural to it, we shall never know its true value. 
Its normal range of climate is from thirty-three to 
fifty-five degrees north and south of the equator ; 



The Potato Book. 25 

or upon elevated tropical lands of tlie same tempe- 
rature ; and no doubt the nearer forty-five de- 
grees tlie better. There is no evidence whatever 
that the exotic character of the plant is the cause 
of its decay or deterioration in any locality. 

5. The reader may hardly be able to credit at 
first the statement that the disease of the potato 
should result from causes seemingly so trivial, 
and that the cure can be found in rules apparently 
80 simple ; yet the changes proposed in its culture 
almost reverse the present method, and place the 
edible in normal relations to atmospheric and 
electrical influences, and in harmony with vital 
laws so that rapid growth, abundant yield, im- 
proved quality are secured. 

6. Vegetables and animals possess organs and 
properties in common, and are subject to the 
same laws of organization and reproduction. To 
this statement the potato is no exception. True, 
the potato is more simple in its structures, and 



26 The Potato Book. 

less complicated in its functions than an animal. 
Vegetables have all the vital qualities and instincts 
of animals. They lack sensibility and mentality. 
In vital endowments there is no difference what- 
ever. Both are dependent on the same normal 
conditions and hygienic agencies for proper devel- 
opment and growth. Nor do the farmer's domes- 
tic animals — his horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, dogs, 
and fowls — more surely degenerate and perish 
than do his potatoes, when subjected to abnormal 
influences. True, the conditions and modes of 
propagation and growth vary, in both animals 
and vegetables, with genera, species, and other 
circumstances, but the essential and invariable 
vital laws are the same in all cases. 

7. A potato differs from an animal, and from 
some vegetables, and from some other roots, in 
the fact that by death it transmits life, the entire 
tuber being the source of life ; and unless this life 
be transmitted integrally, the progeny will be 
devitalized, ultimating, in connection with causes 



The Potato Book. 27 

in debility, disease, and decay. The plan of 
culture herein recommended prescribes no^^os- 
trums and involves no experiments, but removes 
the causes of deterioration, surely though slowly ; 
and, the causes being removed, the effects of 
course cease — the potato disease disappears. 

8. Under no circumstances will the method of 
culture I have explained, fail in arresting decay 
and promoting vigorous and healthy growth, 
except through imperfect management, or a partial 
adoption of it. Those who would have the full 
benefits of the instruction conveyed in this work 
should divest themselves of all prejudices and 
prepossessions, for it is only upon a full observance 
of all the rules in their entirety, adding nothing 
and abating nothing, that any important or con- 
siderable beneficial results can be predicated. 
The success of the plan is demonstrable, and the 
plan itself incapable of deception. 

9. Probably the mere reading of the theory 



28 The Potato Book. 

advanced will convince the intelligent physiologist 
that the improvements suggested in the cultivation 
of the potato (which nearly reverse the common 
method), are vast, and that' the results, both as 
respects the quality and quantity of the crop, must 
be correspondingly important. Actual practice, 
however, can only determine the remedial value 
of the new method to the satisfaction of the 
farmer. Nature cannot be improved. Her laws 
cannot be created nor ignored. All that we 
can do in any department of human action, and 
all that we need do in raising potatoes, is to 
remove the causes which conduce to the perver- 
sions of her laws. 

10. Wlien the present prevalent and erroneous 
method of planting potatoes is corrected in 
accordance with the rules herein given, it will 
then be much better understood than it possibly 
can be now, how unnatural and injurious this 
mode has been. Properly cultivated (the effects 
of existing errors being removed), the potato can 



TJie Potato Book. 29 

no more be diseased, than it can be cured under 
tlie present abnormal treatment. 

11. Though fragmentary parts of the rules 
herein incidcated are or may have been practiced 
in different places, the method and system as a 
whole is claimed to be entirely original, and the 
result of faithful observation, close study, and 
careful experimentation. Those who adopt the 
new method cannot properly impute any fault or 
failure to it unless they plant the same renewed 
seed for three successive years. 

12. The restoration of the potato to health ; its 
augmented size and increased yield, its better 
method of preservation, and its proper mode of 
cooking, increasing, solidifying, and improving it 
as food, will greatly enchance the profitable re- 
sults of its cultivation. And as it will be years 
before the system herein advocated will be gene- 
rally adopted, those who first take hold of it may 
realize fortunes. 



30 The Potato Book. 

13. The author hopes to see this plan adopted 
soon by all farmers, not only for the sake of hav- 
ing good potatoes for the table, but also for the 
purpose of arresting a process in one of our 
most important food-crops analogous to contagion 
in animals — an achievement of vast moment to 
the welfare of the human race. 

14. There are no less than seven prevalent 
errors in the common method of potato culture, 
which tend to the deterioration and destruction of 
the crop. These will be considered in order, and 
the remedy for each indicated. 

[The author purposes, as soon as compliance 
in his plan of potato culture is established, in the 
recognition of its scientific truthfulness and im- 
mense value, to publish a preventive of the 
rinderpest, or cattle -plague, as the principle in- 
volved appHes to all contagious diseases alike, 
whether of vegetables, animals, or human 
beings.— R. T. T.] 



The Potato Book. 31 

ERROR 1. 

A-lthougli the potato disease is perfectly curable, 
yet no kind of potatoes will attain large size, or 
continue productive, if unrenewed from the plum or 
seed-ball for more than twenty years ; and some 
sorts will not thrive without such renewal for more 
than half that length of time. The plum is what 
nature has designed for the reproduction of fresh 
varieties, and for rejuvenation. 

If reproduction is longer neglected, the potato 
becomes exhausted from old age, and this will 
ultimate in decay ; and if in addition to this the 
potato is maltreated, the result will be disease. 
Conscious of such decay, yet ignorant of its cause, 
planters exchange seed potatoes from distant 
places. This may improve the quahty so far as 
change of soil and climate may be beneficial ; but 
no remedy short of a full compHance with the law 
of timely renewal, can restore the j^lant to its 
pristine vigor. Without some miracle to dissever 



32 The Potato Book. 

consequences from their causes, some disease or 
deterioration might perhaps have been anticipated, 
when the ages of some kind of potatoes now 
planted are considered. A persistent neglect of 
the indispensable physiological law of renewal, not 
only results in decay, but aggravates other mor- 
bific conditions which tend to the production of 
disease. 

Undoubtedly certain locahties, soils, seasons, 
and atmospheric conditions, powerfully tend to 
develop the disease, which, from other causes, 
becomes hereditary. 

Of the old worn-out potatoes no complete reno- 
vation can be expected, either in size, productive- 
ness, or flavor. They should be superceded by 
new varieties. Nor can younger kinds generally 
be improved to the utmost without regard to the 
law of renewal. 

Of the various kinds of potatoes under twenty 
years of age, few are so badly affected that they 
will not speedily yield to the power of renewal, so 
far as the disease is concerned, when due attention 



The Potato Book. 33 

is paid to the rules of normal culture. Tlie 
potato, as is the case with other vegetables, and 
with animals, is more easily cured before than 
after vitahty is in a state of decline from old age. 

[I have before me a Prize Essay on the Culti- 
vation of the Potato, by D. A. Compton, of 
Hawley, Pa., to which a premium of $100, offered 
by W. T. Wylie, of Belief onte. Pa., was awarded. 
In this Essay there is no allusion to the subject of 
renewing the crop from the plum ; nor can I 
find any mention of it in any of the works on 
potato-culture, reports of Farmers' Clubs, nor 
Agricultural Journals which I have been able to 
obtain. I have, however, heard incidentally that 
some amateur farmers have tried this experiment 
with excellent results. If the idea of reproducing 
the potato in this way, and thus renovating or 
renewing its vitality, is not original with Dr. 
McLaurui, I think he is justly entitled to the 
credit of discovering and promulgating its neces- 
sity.— R T. T.] 



34 The Potato Book. 

KEMEDY 1. 

"When ripe, pick from the best specimens or 
kinds of potato vines the largest plums, or 
berries ; dry and preserve them from dampness 
and frost. In the spring sow them in the 
nursery. Treat them afterwards as you do your 
other potatoes, a la regime ; and from the product, 
in two or three years, you may select the best 
kinds for field planting. 

This is all that is necessary to say on this 
subject. But, in the details of the process of 
renewal there is an ample, and, to most persons, 
a novel field for experiment. One may be more 
skilful than another, and, perhaps, more so than 
I have been ; hence I purposely avoid details, 
preferring to leave the matter open for every 
one's unbiased experience and investigation ; as 
any person may, by attentive observation and 
careful study, originate or perfect some useful 
feature, or make some valuable discovery. If you 
are obHged to select from the stock of seedsmen, 



The Potato Book. 35 

be sure and obtain the best specimens. One 
method, however, of preserving the plums, I will 
mention, which is in sand or sawdust. They 
may be sowed in rows, hke turnips, thinning them 
when too thick, but never replanting those which 
are pulled off. 

• [The seeds of the plums, like those of melons 
and cucumbers, may be squeezed out, dried, and 
preserved in paper. In the spring they may be 
sowed in drills, like onions or turnips. They 
should be kept thoroughly weeded, and have 
room enough to prevent them from coming in 
contact in the process of growth. — R. T. T.] 



ERHOK 2. 

The omniginous and promiscuous method of 
planting the potato is another cause of deteriora- 
tion and disease. Mixing together for seed pota- 
toes any and every kind, good, bad, old, young, 



36 The Potato Book. 

indiscriminately, affects the crop as deleteriously 
as a similar process would the breeding of animals. 
No good crop can ever permanently come of such 
planting, however favorable the season may be, 
or however rich the soil, or skilful the tillage. 

[I am not aware that any other seed, whether 
of grains, fruits, or roots, is treated in this way 
by farmers ; and there is no reason in the nature 
of things, certainly none in the laws of reproduc- 
tion, wh}^ potatoes should be. They are surely 
no exception to vital or organic laws. Our 
farmers seem to understand very well that, if they 
would have the best crops of wheat, or corn, they 
must have seed in its most perfect condition. The 
rule in relation to corn, to select the best 
kernels from the best rows of the best ears of the 
best hills, is not exaggerated in the least. And 
it appHes to seed potatoes as well as to seed corn. 
Indeed it appHes to every living organism that it 
is desirable to have in its best possible condition. 
The great truth that the plant, the tree, the 



The Potato Book. 37 

animal, and the man, is but the unfolding of the 
seed or ^%^, and that its conditions, or constitu- 
tional qualities must inevitably attach to the 
individual organism developed from it through 
life, may some day be reahzed, and then agricul- 
ture may be placed on the hygienic basis. The 
more progressive physiologists are beginning to 
learn that ante-natal conditions are of prime 
importance in the rearing of normal offspring— a 
law which appHes to the seeds and eggs as well 
as the embryotic hfe, of the future beings. Who- 
ever saw a farmer select the seed of an apple, a 
pear, a peach, a plum, a cherry, a gooseberry, a 
currant, a pumpkin, a squash, a watermelon, or a 
cucumber, except from the largest, best-flavored 
and most smooth and solid specimens he could 
find ? Probably such a thing was never heard of, 
and yet he jumbles big and little, sound and 
rotten, smooth and rough, sprouted and blighted 
potatoes together for planting, and expects a 
good crop, but gets the fruits of what he sows !— 
B. T. T.] 



38 The Potato Book. 

KEMEDY 2. 

In choosing the proper kinds of potatoes for 
planting, it should be remembered that the most 
profitable, if not the sweetest, grow large in size ; 
in shape they are round like apples, pears, peaches, 
or eggs, or a combination of them all ; in color 
they are red, pink, or white, or all three colors 
intermingled ; the eyes are few and not sunken, 
but protuberant. The potato should be hard, 
heavy, dry, and sweet, and of course, wholesome ; 
and when perfectly healthy, it will have all these 
qualities. 

"While the selections are made in conformi^^y to 
the above rules, no injury results from planting 
different varieties in the same field, unless the 
disparities in age and quality are extreme ; size 
being always attainable by a close adherence to 
the rules. 

It is not denied that some sorts of potatoes 
which vary from those above described in shape 
and color may be good ; but it is maintained that 



The Potato Book. 39 

those answering this description, upon the whole, 
are the best. 



EHROR 3. 

vivisiECTio^sr. 

Cutting the seed is one of the chief causes of 
the potato disease. The method of gouging out 
the germinal part, or eye, or slicing the potato into 
pieces for planting, has long been practiced by 
nearly all planters, but with what result let the 
present deplorable prevalence of the potato rot 
testify. 

The sundering of the bud from the body of the 
tuber, under the impression that such mutilated 
fragments will produce healthy and vigorous fruit, 
is most fallacious and absurd, and has no parallel 
among the many blunders of agriculturists. This 
unnatural severance by division dissipates the vital 
forces of the seed, and debility of the offspring is 
the inevitable consequence. In proportion as tho 
unity of the tuber is destroyed by multiplied seo- 



40 The Potato Book. 

tions, so the progeny derived therefrom is en- 
feebled and rendered liable to disease. To suppose 
that this process of mutilation economizes seed, 
and produces more bushels than the sound potatoes 
would if planted whole, is a delusion that has 
probably no parallel in false physiology. Instinct 
never suggested so absurd a notion ; reason never 
conceived it ; science never taught it ; nor did 
experience ever confirm it. It is said that the 
New Zealander first learned it from immigrants. 

Nothing in the anatomical structure of the 
potato, nor in the physiology of its functions, gives 
the least countenance to the notion. Its analogy 
is not found in nature. The miserable and bar- 
barous device neither saves material nor increases 
production, but, on the contrary, wastes the one 
and diminishes the other. It blights the vital 
stamina and transmits imperfect organization and 
abnormal conditions, ultimating in deformity, dis- 
ease, and premature decay. 

Potato-cutting for seed is really seed-mutilating. 
In effect it is the rot inoculation. To dissever the 



TJie Potato Book. 41 

head from the body of the potato, hermaphrodite 
though it may seemingly be, is separating the 
procreative or reproductive organs from the body, 
or from the greater part of it, so that the source 
of sustenance is reduced to one-half, or even one- 
fourth, of what is required, and what nature 
intended and provided. To plant such gelded nips 
dissevered from the bodily attachment not only 
debilitates the product, but hazards its very exist- 
ence. 

Did the germ-cut method of planting increase 
the yield of the potato economically, it would do 
so with grain and other seeds, fruits and roots. 
Each single potato, and each single grain of wheat 
or corn, is a perfect organism ; and just in the 
ratio that either is mutilated, its generative powers 
are weakened and its progeny deteriorated. 

"What we sow we shall reap." The planted 
seed should not only be whole, but it should be 
sound in body and skin. Some superstitious 
persons believe that the potato-rot is God-sent, 
and would find a remedy in prayer ! But here. 



42 The Potato Book. 

as everywhere, prayer without works will prove 
unavailing. Science has dispelled many libels on 
God and nature, and the plan of culture here 
recommended will prove that man, not God, is the 
author of the potato-rot. 

Vivisection outrages both parents and progeny ; 
and when continued not only from year to year 
but from generation to generation, cannot fail to 
deteriorate and in time exhaust the crops. 

By renewing the germinative members of 
organic life from their main body, in dividing the 
potato into several fragments, or slices, each 
obtains but a moiety of its natural and necessary 
parental support and nutrient elements ; the 
young shoot is starved ; hence the potato blight, 
or atrophy t which precedes the rot. 

Through no channel other than the life-sub- 
stance of the parent, can the young shoot derive 
its indispensable food, to nourish the stem until 
its roots spread and its top or lung expands. 
Through this channel alone the j)9,rent potato 
imparts its whole life to its offspring ; and upon 



The Potato Book. 43 

its quantity and vigor the health and productive- 
ness of the offspring depend. 

When we inquire of the vivisecting farmers why 
they cut through the structures analogous to the 
skin, muscle, blood-vessels, and connective tissue 
in animals, thus utterly dismembering the iudivid- 
uality of the seed, the answer is, it saves seed and 
causes a more prolific yield. 

The fallacy of this opinion will be further ex- 
posed under Error 5 — its proper place. That the 
practice of seed-cuttiug (seed-killiQg), so contrary 
to common sense, so tedious and unnatural, so 
unphysiological and anti-anatomical, should have 
prevailed so long in enlightened communities, and 
should, moreover, be so generally practiced with- 
out being questioned, is a striking commentary on 
the nature of inherited prejudice and transmitted 
error. Is it not time that this proceeding, which 
threatens the total annihilation of the plum, and 
the ruin of the plant, should terminate ? 

[I am satisfied that Dr. McLaurin does not "put 



44 The Potato Book. 

the case " any too strongly on the subject of muti- 
lating seed-potatoes. But I find the practice 
almost UDiversal in this vicinity. Indeed, so far as 
I have been enabled to observe personally, there are 
no exceptions. I find, too, that many farmers in 
this truck-farming region, who raise potatoes prin- 
cipally for the Philadelphia market, plant the 
smallest sizes instead of the largest, probably 
because they are not saleable, and on inquiry I 
learn that the general tendency of the potato crop 
has been for several years to smaller and still 
smaller sizes. The sizes of the different varieties 
raised hereabouts do not average more than one- 
fourth the sizes that my father raised in western 
New York, on new land, between forty and fifty 
years ago, nor is the quality of these comparable 
to those. 

I can recollect when two large potatoes (in these 
degenerate potato days they would be considered 
huge), baked in hot ashes, were a full and luxu- 
rious meal, and that too without salt or butter. 
To think of them is, in the language of Ossian, 



The Potato Book. 45 

"Like tlie memory of joys that are past ; pleasant 
yet mournful to the soul." The best potatoes I 
can find now are flat and insipid compared with 
those I once feasted on, and desired nothing 
better. And the same is true of such apples as I 
can purchase now, and such as I ate from my 
father's orchard, when a child. Both crops are 
sadly degenerated, and nothing but hygienic agri- 
culture will ever renovate them. 

In looking over the latest publications of the 
seedsmen and agricultural journals, I do not find 
any one objecting to the seed-cutting of potatoes, 
but most of them recommend it. One of the 
largest dealers in Philadelphia, Eobert Buist, jr., 
in his ''Almanac and Garden Manual'' for 1872, 
recommends the selection of large and good po- 
tatoes for seed, but recommends cutting them into 
four or six pieces. He says, " Many cultivators in 
this vicinity select good formed tubers and plant 
them whole ; this may be an advantage should the 
season prove to be very dry, but we look upon 
it as a great waste of seed, as the product 



^5 The Potato Book. 

from such a crop is no better than that grown 
from well-formed tubers cut into sets." 

The difference may not be appreciable to a 
careless observer in a single season ; but if there 
is any virtue in the laws of organic life, the practice 
cannot be otherwise than most pernicious. Is not 
the admission that whole tubers will do better 
than mutilated ones, presumptive evidence that 
there are vital relations between all parts of the 
seed that cannot be interrupted without injury ? 
If the whole parent-body of the potato is ne- 
cessary in a dry season, it may be useful in any 
season. Vitality itself is the best possible pro- 
tection against drought or wet, heat or cold. — 
R. T. T.] 



KEMEDY 3. 

"Cease to do evil." Never touch the seed- 
potato with a knife. Do not mar, mangle, bruise, 
nor mutilate it in any manner. Drop it into the 
ground whole and sound. 



The Potato Book. 47 

Althougli the magnitude of the evil resulting 
from imperfect seed is very well seen at its pre- 
sent stage, yet until the maximum health of the 
potato is attained by the adoption of the plan 
herein recommended, the full advantages of a 
good article of food, such as the potato in its 
highest perfection is capable of affording, cannot 
be fuUy reahzed or adequately appreciated. 

When potatoes cultivated in both the wrong 
and the right ways are seen growing side by side 
in different fields, the time, labor, and product of 
each method can be calculated and compared, and 
then the extent of the present evil can be better 
understood. 

I must here caution the reader against a possi- 
ble source of miscalculation. Should his neighbor 
continue to plant and cultivate in the ordinary 
manner while he is trying the new method, the 
diseased potatoes of his neighbor may infect his 
more or less in the bloom — when the pollen 
blows. 

Experimental tests, however, without due 



48 The Potato Book. 

regard to all the influencing circumstances, may 
only lead to seK-deception. If any one particular, 
however unimportant it may seem, is disregarded 
or overlooked, the whole experiment fails. 

To test the matter in the best possible manner, 
after plowing the ground, take the requisite num- 
ber of laborers, and plant one day on the new plan 
and then one day on the old plan, in both cases 
carefully measuring the potatoes planted and the 
time expended. In the case of seed-cutting, time 
should of course be reckoned from the commence- 
ment of the cutting process ; and the potatoes 
should be measured before cutting, as a bushel of 
cuts and a bushel uncut differ very materially. 
Therefore measure a given number of bushels ; 
cut one half of them and plant the pieces, reckon- 
ing the time spent in cutting as a part of the day's 
work. Plant the other half whole ; and then the 
product of both, when dug, will show the value of 
each method, so far as the labor of planting is 
concerned, and their respective values by contrast. 

The extent of ground occupied by each should 



The Potato Book. 49 

be taken into tlie account. The time at whicli the 
blight appears in either ; its extent and virulence ; 
the quality of the potato — its size, solidity, dry- 
ness, and flavor, are also factors to go into the 
general estimate. 

In all the processes and stages of cultivation, in 
order to have a fair and conclusive experiment, 
the common method and the one now proposed 
must be strictly followed ; and if the respective 
products are kept separately, and the two pro- 
cesses repeated yearly, the value of each, or the 
demerits of the one and the merits of the other, 
will in due time be conclusively demonstrated ; 
for the new and natural method will gradually 
and constantly gain on the other, both in the pro- 
ductiveness of the crop in proportion to the 
labor expended, and in its quality. 



50 The Potato Book. 

ERROR 4. 

Anotlier most pernicious error is that of selling 
or eating the largest and best potatoes and select- 
ing the smaller, poorer, bruised, and scabious 
ones for seed. If a farmer should apply such a 
principle to the raising of domestic animals, he 
would most certainly be suspected of idiocy or 
madness. Yet the principle is precisely the same 
in both cases. Nor does the farmer ever think of 
abusing any seed or root in this manner except 
that of the unfortunate potato. 

The author has never maimed nor cut potatoes 
for planting ; nor has he during the past ten 
years planted them otherwise than according to 
the plan herein recommended. He has never had 
any appearance of disease among them. 

The attempt to raise the greatest possible 
quantity of potatoes per acre by means of strong 
manuring, engenders and perpetuates disease, 
and unless abandoned, will prevent all attempts at 



TJie Potato Book. 51 

cure. One might as well undertake to raise the 
greatest possible number of calves from one cow's 
milk or one acre of grass. 

[The subject of manures or fertilizers is one of 
immense importance, and, in my opinion, before 
agriculture can become hygienic and placed on a 
truely scientific basis, the current methods of fer- 
tilizing all plants which produce food for human 
beings must be not only reformed but revolution- 
ized. As water, ammonia, carbonic acid and a few 
earthy and saline matters constitute the food of 
plants, and as those are all constituents of the 
mineral kingdom, it is certainly a roundabout 
and expensive as well as a filthy and trouble- 
some business to keep animals, for the sake 
of manuring the soil. It is a common remark 
that cattle, horses, sheep and hogs, are necessary, 
if not to work or to be eaten, to supply fertilizers 
by converting the products of the vegetable king- 
dom into manure. There is no science and little 
intelligence manifested in this notion, in view of 



52 The Potato Book, 

tlie fact that the whole vegetable kingdom feeds 
on inorganic or chemical elements, while no 
animal can produce a particle of food of any kind, 
but merely subsists on what is formed in the 
processes of vegetable growth. 

Abundant experience has shown that the most 
effectual method for renovating old worn out or 
badly-tilled soils is to grow clover or any similar 
crop, and plow it in. Any vegetable matter of 
any kind, allowed to decay and decompose, 
becomes a natural and wholesome fertilizer. But 
fertilizers can be obtained directly from the 
mineral kingdom, whenever necessary, more eco- 
nomically and of better quality than animal 
excretions can furnish. 

This subject is well presented in the Scientific 
American of February 24th, 1872, and as the facts 
are exceedingly interesting and instructive, I copy 
the article entire : 



TJie Potato Book. 53 

AGRICTJLTUEAL CHEMISTRY AND CHEM- 
ICAL MANURES. 

The researches of that veteran chemist, Baron 
Liebig, and others, in the analysis of soils and the 
use of artificial manures, did not result in such 
extensive progress in agriculture as was antici- 
pated. As the effort to apply the knowledge 
gained by these researches was made throughout . 
the world by intelligent agriculturists, it became 
evident that there was still some lack in agri- 
cultural chemistry, some mysterious circumstance, 
relation or element, that defeated this endeavor. 
As a consequence, the idea of chemical farming 
became a thing to be ridiculed, and fell into an 
ill repute which still attends it. The prejudice 
thus created will for a long time impede progress ; 
but there cannot be a doubt that the missing 
link, which, if found in Liebig's researches, would 
have resulted in success instead of failure, has at 
last been discovered. 

In the light of this revelation, the cause of the 



54 TJie Potato Book. 

failure to apply chemical principles to agriculture 
is plain. We find it fully explained in tlie lectures 
of M. Ville, a translation of which, as delivered at 
the experimental farm of Vincennes, France, now 
lies before us.* These lectures are, we believe, 
the most important contribution to agricultural 
science that has appeared during the last half 
century. In our review of them, which we shall 
not attempt to make exhaustive, we shall ex- 
tract some passages which will give a gUmpse of 
their character to such as have not read them. 
In the third lecture, M. Ville remarks : 

A priori, one would think that a chemical 
analysis which has been pushed so far in our day, 
and whose methods have acquired at the same 
time so much delicacy and certainty, ought at 
least to give us a means of estimating with 
certainty the richness of the soil, and so guiding 

* Chemical Manures. Agricultiiral Lectures, delivered 
at the experimental farm at Vincennes, by George Ville. 
Translated by Miss E. L. Howard. Third Edition. At- 
lanta, Ga. : Plantation Publishing Co. 



The Potato Book. 55 

us ill the choice of the manure best suited to its 
nature. There is none, however, and I defy the 
most skilful chemist to say in advance what will 
be the return from earth submitted to him, and 
what manures are most appropriate. 

A few words will explain the reason why chem- 
istry is powerless to furnish us with these indica- 
tions : you must recall the distinctions we have 
drawn between the different elements of which 
the soil is composed. 

Let us suppose a soil containing both quartz, 
sand and felspar sand among its mechanical 
elements. For vegetation these two sands are 
equivalent, although the first is from silica and 
nothing but silica, while the second is a silicate 
. based upon lime, potash and soda, besides con- 
taining phosphate of lime in very feeble but 
appreciable quantities. 

Here, then, are two bodies whose composition, 
in spite of similitude of exterior, have no analogy ; 
and which, however, are equivalent in an agri- 
cultural point of view, because, the felspar being 



56 The Potato Book. 

insoluble in water, its role in regard to vegetation 
descends to that of the quartz sand, that is to 
say, to a simple mechanical element. But for 
the chemist, there are no insoluble bodies, so he 
confounds in one whole the potash, lime and 
phosphate of lime that the felspar sand contains, 
though they are of no use in vegetation, with the 
products of the same nature which we have 
ranged under the class of active assimilable 
elements. Thus is explained the insufficiency of 
the signs with which chemistry can furnish us. 

In order to understand fully the meaning of 
this quotation, it is necessary to say that M. Ville 
includes all the essential constituents of soil in 
which plants can grow, in the category of fertil- 
izers ; but he divides them into two classes, the 
first of which is azotic or nitrogenous matter, and 
the second of which includes ten mineral sub- 
stances, only three of which, phosphate of lime, 
potash, and lime, are so directly connected with 
the growth of plants that they need occupy the 



The Potato Book. 57 

attention of the agricultturist in his attempt to 
restore to soils what has been drawn from them 
by the growth of crops. The other minerals act 
mechanically and are hence called mechanical 
fertilizers ; but M. Yille maintains that they exist 
naturally in sufficient quantities, and that it is not 
necessary to provide them. So far as the mere 
growth of plants is concerned, this is probably 
correct, but there are doubtless many cases in 
which it is desirable to add some material not 
directly concerned in plant growth, for the pur- 
pose of modifying stiff soils, or tempering hght 
ones. 

The most favorable conditions of soil for plant 
growth being the presence of azotic matter, phos- 
phate of lime, potash, and hme, M. Yille calls a 
mixture of these substances " the complete fertil- 
izer." The non-assimilable elements are consid- 
ered as purely mechanical in their effects. 

The following experiments are given to illustrate 
these facts : 

In burnt sand, free from all additions, but 



58 The Potato Book. 

moistened with distilled water, wheat acquires 
but a rudimentary development — the straw hardly 
attains the dimensions of a knitting needle. In 
this condition, however, vegetation follows its 
usual course ; the plant blooms, bears grain, but 
in each head there are but one or two dwarfed, 
badly formed grains. Thus, without soil, the 
wheat finds in the water it receives and the 
carbonic acid of air, aided by the substance of its 
grain, resources sufficient — sorrowfully, it is true, 
but at last — to run through the entire cycle of its 
evolution. 

From 22 grains of seed, weighing nearly 18 
grains, we obtain 108 grains of harvest. Add the 
ten minerals (phosphorus, sulphur, chlorine, silici- 
um, calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, iron 
and manganese) to the sand, excluding the azotie 
matter, and the result is but little more. 

Under these new conditions, the wheat is a 
little more develoj)ed than in the preceding case, 
but the harvest is still more feeble ; it reaches 
144 grains. Suppress the minerals and add only 



The Potato Book. 59 

azotic matter to tlie sand ; the growth will still be 
mean and stunted, but the harvest will slightly 
increase, as it reaches 162 grains. Let us follow 
the changes. In pure burnt sand, 108 grains ; 
wdth minerals without azotic matter, 144 grains ; 
with azotic matter alone, 162 grains. 

In this last case, a new system is shown. As 
long as we oi^erate only with minerals, the plants 
are diseased, the leaves show a yellowish-green 
color. As soon as we add azotic matter to the 
sand the leaves change their color, becoming 
a dark green. It seems as if vegetation would 
take its usual course, but the appearances are 
deceitful ; the harvest is still feeble. 

Let us attempt a third experiment, which will, in 
a measure, be a synthesis of the three preceding. 
Unite azotic matter and the minerals in the burnt 
sand. This time you will be tempted to believe 
in the intervention of a magician, the phenomenon 
so far surpasses those preceding it. Just now the 
growth was languishing, doubtful, diseased ; now 
the plants shoot up as soon as they break the 



6o The Potato Book. 

ground ; the leaves are a beautiful gi-een ; the 
straight, firm stalk ends in a head filled with 
good grain ; the harvest reaches from 396 to 450 
grains. 

You see, gentlemen, relying on experience, 
which is our guide by choice, we have succeeded 
in artificially producing vegetation to the exclu- 
sion of manures and all unknown substances. 

You will acknowledge that this is an important 
and fundamental point. No more mystery, no 
undetermined power ; some chemical products of a 
known purity, distilled water perfectly pure in 
itself, one seed as a starting point, and the result, 
a harvest comparable in all points to the best 
obtained in good earth. 

We are, therefore, justified in saying that the 
problem of vegetation here recei^^es its solution, 
for we have not only defined the conditions 
necessary to the production of vegetation, but 
the degree of importance of each of the concurring 
agents. 

Azotic matter in its decomposition furnishes 



The Potato Book. 6i 

ammonia, and nitrates ; and tlie clay constitutes a 
receptable which holds and gives out gradually as 
may be required these important ingredients. 
M. Ville divides plants into two classes, according 
as they draw their nitrogen from the air or the 
soil. Thus wheat is a type of plants which pre- 
fer their nitrogen in the form of salts of ammonia, 
and take it from the soil. Beets prefer it in the 
form of nitrate, and take it from the soil. Peas 
and the other leguminous plants prefer to take it 
as a gas from the air. The consequence of this 
distinction is that plants which take nitrogen 
from the air will flourish in a soil containing only 
the other elements of the complete fertilizer, 
namely, phosphate of lime, potash, and lime. 
Therefore, by planting in a soil one of each of the 
two classes of plants, it is possible to tell whether 
the soil contains the azotic and mineral matters or 
not. Thus, if peas and wheat be planted in the 
same soil, and the peas yield well while wheat 
yields little, the land has the mineral elements but 
lacks the azotic or nitrogenous matters. 



62 The Potato Book. 

At Yincennes, previous to the fertilization of 
the soil, land produced nothing, and hence was 
proved deficient in all the elements of the com- 
plete fertilizer, by the addition of which it has been 
made extremely productive. 

As chemical analysis of soils fails for reasons 
above stated, the richness of the soil is determined 
as follows : 

Suppose you institute seven cultures of the same 
plant — it may be of the beet, or wheat, as you will. 

To the first give the complete fertilizer ; to the 
second, the same fertilizer, excluding azotic matter; 
to the third, the complete fertilizer deprived of 
phosphate of lime ; to the fourth, the complete 
fertilizer less the potash ; to the fifth, less the 
lime ; to the sixth, less all the minerals — that is 
to say, reduced to the azotic matter ; the seventh 
not having received any manure. 

It is very evident that if, in the complete fertili- 
zer, the effect proper to each coQiponent is mani- 
fest but as it is associated with three others, the 
Comparison of the returns obtained from the seven 



The Potato Book. 63 

strips of the little field ouglit to indicate what the 
soil contains and in what it is wanting. 

In this system of investigation, the culture with 
the complete fertilizer becomes, in a measure, the 
invariable standard of comparison to which are 
referred the returns of the other strips of ground; 
and, according as they approach or recede, we 
conclude that the earth contains or does not con- 
tain the element which has been voluntarily ex- 
cluded from the fertilizer. 

To put the value of this method beyond doubt, 
M. Ville reports the results given under three dif- 
ferent conditions. 

At the experimental farm at Vincennes were 
obtained, in 1864, the following proportional re- 
turns from wheat : 

With the complete fertilizer , 5644 

'' " " without lime 4333 

" " " " potash 4044 

« « " " phosphate .... 3463 

« " " " azotic matter. 1888 

Without any fertilizer 1588 

The conclusion is evident. At Vincennes, the 



64 The Potato Book. 

complete fertilizer was necessary : the azotic mat- 
ter was most deficient. 

An eminent agriculturist of the department of 
the Somme furnished a second example, which is 
upon the beet ; 

"With the complete fertilizer 4504 

" " " without lime 4103 

« " " potash 3703 

« « " phosphate.. 3208 

" " " azotic matter 3200 

Without any fertilizer 2202 

You see here, also, the earth is wanting in azotic 
matter, and, to put it under high culture, we 
must have recourse to the complete fertilizer. 

The third example is from a culture of sugar 
cane, instituted by the Hon. M. de Zebrun, of 
Guadaloupe, a former delegate from that colony : 

With the complete fertihzer 50666 

without lime .... 44444 

potash... 32111 

" " " phosphate 13333 

azote 49777 

Without any fertilizer 2666 



The Potato Book. 65 

If I add tliat sugar cane particularly draws its 
azote from the air, you will conclude that the soil 
is particularly wanting in potash and phosphate 
of lime. 

Here are, then, two methods of knowing the 
richness in the land. The first is founded on the 
culture of two different plants without any fertil- 
izer, and the second, on the culture of the same 
plant with five different fertihzers. These two 
applications of the same principle lead to the 
same results, and verify and complete each other. 

I need not add, that for each of these trials to 
have its full signification, the earth must not be 
used until the effect of each fertilizer has been 
spent. 

By the aid of our experiments in burnt sand, 
and with only chemical products, we have realized 
a theoretic scale of culture whose progressive 
returns have shown us the laws which regulate 
vegetable productions. By the hght of the col- 
lection of ideas, we were enabled to conceive and 

to realize practical processes of analysis accessible 
5 



e^ The Potato Book. 

to all, whose testimony is of almost absolute cer- 
tainty, and by means of which we can always say 
what a land contains, what it needs, and can con- 
sequently determine the nature of the agents to 
which we must have recourse to fertilize it. 

In subsequent lectures, M. Ville gives tabulated 
statements of results from the use of what are or- 
dinarily called chemical fertilizers, that is, such as 
are not directly of organic origin. These state- 
ments indicate that the chemistry of plant-growth 
is destined to pass from under the odium of pre- 
vious failures, and take its place in the sciences as 
a splendid collection of established facts, which 
will inaugurate a new era in agriculture. 

"We cannot extend our remarks and quotations 
further, but we will say that we have rarely ex- 
amined a work more replete with interest, or pe- 
rused a record of experiments in which the true 
scientific method has been more closely followed. 
B. T. T.] 



The Potato Book. 67 

REMEDY 4:. 

Reserve your best and largest potatoes for seed, 
just as you would act in the business of raising 
animals ; or as you would do were the seed any- 
thing else but that of the potato ; for that which 
is not fit for eating or selling is certainly not fit 
for planting. 

Potatoes will produce more abundantly by 
weight, in an equal ground or air space, if the 
number is smaller and the size larger, than if the 
reverse be the case. Dividing half a dozen large 
potatoes into two or three times as many small 
ones, adds nothing to the quantity, while it im- 
pairs the quality. A potato of one pound 
weight will produce a greater yield of potatoes 
than it will if it is divided into fragments, or cut 
into what are called " Seed sets," in an equal area 
of land, provided the proper conditions of culture 
are observed ; hence the labor expended in cut- 
ting is worse than wasted, for it both damages 
the quality and diminishes the quantity. 



68 The Potato Book. 

It is no exaggeration of the truth to say that 
a bushel of large potatoes can be planted sooner 
than half a peck of cuttings. The labor of plant- 
ing, therefore, is greatly lessened when the plant- 
ing is done normally. By this method the potato 
will increase in size from year to year, while by 
dwarf -plan ting the constant tendency is to dimi- 
nution in size, imperfection in quality, disease, 
and decay. 



ERKOR 5. 

Insufficient allowance of space for potatoes to 
grow in, as well as stinted size of seed, is the rule 
mth farmers, the exceptions being very few. But 
the error is a very grave one, and the injurious 
consequences are second only to seed-cutting. 

Although there is a continued circulation and 
admixture of properties derived from the earth 
and from the air, and a constant reciprocal opera- 



The Potato Book. 69 

tion or intercliange of elements through and be- 
tween the stem and the roots, yet in the growth of 
a potato it receives much the larger proportion of 
its nutritive material from the atmosphere ; conse- 
quently it is not so much for want of earth-room 
as for want of air-space that the potato suffers 
when planted after the ordinary fashion. 

The potato, as well as an animal, or a human 
being, must have sufficient breathing room, or it 
cannot maintain its normal condition, nor produce 
sound structures. Its foliage constitutes its lungs, 
and with its stem or stalk, its respiratory appa- 
ratus ; hence a given space, so that it can have 
the exclusive use of sufficient atmosphere, is 
absolutely necessary to vigorous growth. There 
must, therefore, be proper distances between the 
plants. 

In vain will potatoes of ample size and un- 
blemished quahty be planted, unless they are 
placed far enough apart to afford the indispensa- 
ble room for healthful respiration. The space 
between the planted potatoes should always 



70 T/te Potato Book. 

correspond with their size — the larger the 
potatoes the further apart. 

Much deception, in judging of the propriety of 
planting whole potatoes, is attributable to the 
miserly allowance of room. So long as whole 
potatoes, however large and sound they may be, 
are crowded together in planting, the farmer will 
never be able to discover the intriusic difference 
between whole and fragmentary seed ; for size of 
seed without sufficient room for it to grow in, 
and ample space without the proper size of the 
seed, are equally detrimental ; and either may be 
as bad as cut-seed. 

It is just because sufficient space between the 
seed is not allowed, when whole potatoes are 
planted, that many persons suppose that the 
planting of cuttings will be economical and save a 
part of the seed in the production of a given 
crop in bushels. Indeed, some persons think 
that they have proved the cuttings to be more 
prolific than whole potatoes. It may be true that 
cuttiQgs with ample space will produce a larger 



The Potato Book. 71 

crop than whole potatoes can with less than half 
the space required ; for it is possible so to crowd 
them as to render any considerable yield impos- 
sible. 



KEMEDY 5. 

Plant the potatoes at uniform distances apart, 
according to size. From three and a-haK to four 
feet is the general rule. Three feet may suffice 
for the first year ; three and a-half will be needed 
the second year, and possibly four feet the thu'd 
year, according to the increase of size from year 
to year. It is quite possible, and, indeed, proba- 
ble, that the discovery or production of new and 
larger kinds of potatoes, with unusual expansion 
of stem, would render a space of more than four 
feet beneficial 

The seed potatoes (the largest size, and per- 
fectly sound) should be carefully dropped. They 
should be unsprouted ; and if properly preserved 
for the purpose of planting, there will be no 



72 The Potato Book. 

sprouting until they are placed in tiie ground. 
If permitted to germinate before being planted, 
they will be more or less damaged ; nor will the 
progeny be so vital or prolific. If the sprouts 
are long, or have been broken off, the potatoes 
should never be planted. 

No potato of less than half a pound in weight 
should be planted ; if it is, the loss to the planter 
is much greater than the gain can possibly be — 
especially if results beyond a single season are 
calculated. The larger the potato, if not exces- 
sive, the better, provided that sufficient space is 
allowed for it to grow in. 

The law of propagating size from size holds 
good alike for vegetables and animals. Size and 
space should always be carefully adapted to each 
other, for, as already remarked, one is compara- 
tively useless without the other. He who sows 
bountifully in relation to both size and space, will 
reap bountifully. 



The Potato Book. 73 

ERROR 6. 

I3E3:ei' I'LA.nsrTiivra-. 

Burying the seed potatoes as thougli they were 
dead matter, into the cold bottom of a deep 
furrow, where the undrained moisture settles, and 
the vivifying heat of the sun never penetrates 
efficiently, is another egregious blunder. They 
should, on the contrary, be placed on the surface 
of the ground, the sod being turned over them. 

The ordinary deep planting retards growth, 
delays maturity, and enfeebles the whole plant. 
Potatoes so treated cannot have the dryness, 
firmness, sweetness, nor the size nor yield of 
th ose that are properly managed. Such planting 
also predisposes them to disease. 

[I am inclined to the opinion that surface 
planting may be a very important matter for 
other crops as well as potatoes. The soil in this 
vicinity is dry and sandy ; corn does well, except 
in unusually dry seasons, and melons do splen- 



74 The Potato Book. 

didly except in wet seasons. Last season I 
planted water-melons between the rows of grape 
vines which had been planted two years before. 
They grew well until July, and promised an 
abundant yield. But the month of July was 
unusually rainy, and when the melons were 
nearly grown the -vines began to perish, and soon 
after every melon rotted. One of my neighbors 
• had several acres, of as thrifty and promising a 
crop as I ever saw. In ten days more they should 
have been ready for market. They had aU at- 
tained the fuU average size. But several rainy 
days spread a blight over the whole field. The 
melons seemed pervaded with gangrene. They 
became discolored, rapidly softened and rotted, 
and the vines turned dark, and soon withered. 
Not one melon ripened. Perhaps if the seeds had 
been planted on the surface after the manner that 
Dr. McLaurin recommends for potato planting, 
or on ridges a little elevated above the general 
level, the rains would not have destroyed them.-— 
B. T. T.] 



TJie Potato Book. 75 

BEME^DY 6. 

Kun a furrow with a double-moulded plow, 
alongside of the edge of the upturned sod ; not in 
the furrow, but on the surface, drop your large 
potatoes, three and a half to four feet apart, as 
already explained. Your return trip will cover 
the seed, and, at the same time, turn over a new 
sod ready for another row of potatoes to be 
dropped, and so on until the whole field is planted. 
The quantity that can be planted in one day by 
this new method is double or triple that which can 
be planted in the old way, thus accomplishing 
another great saving of labor. 

The calibre of the plow should be such, if 
possible, as to be capable of openmg a furrow 
twenty-one inches or two feet wide : that is, ten 
and a half or twelve inches on each side, so as to 
equalize the distance of the sets apart, crosswise 
as well as lengthwise. 

This method of planting is admirably adapted 
to prairie or fallow land ; for the tougher and 



76 The Potato Book. 

more grassy the sod the better ; when overspread 
"with a thin coat of some fertilizer (mineral is best) 
and the sod turned over, it resembles a sandwich, 
or two pieces of buttered bread turned butter to 
butter. The surface of one sod overlapping the 
surface of the other, brings grass to grass, which, 
decaying makes a covering of rich manure in 
which the seed potatoes are embedded. 

When the potatoes are dug, this sod, if tough, 
and only partly decomposed, turns back into its 
original portion, exposing the potatoes to view, 
huddled together like turkey's eggs in a nest, and 
almost as clean. 

If, on the same field, potatoes are planted two 
successive years, this plan will allow the alter- 
nate two feet of land left unplowed the first 
year, to be plowed the second year, and so 
alternating. The drill or ridge one year may be 
where the furrow was the preceding year. 

Should subsoiling be deemed necessary at 
weeding time, run through all the drills or ridges a 
double-mould plow, capable of turning up a furrow 



The Potato Book. 77 

of about one foot in width only ; tliat is, six or 
seven inches on either side ; and in two successive 
years the field will be sufficiently subsoiled. In 
this manner the whole farm may be subsoiled by 
planting potatoes two years in succession in one 
field, and then changing to another. x\nd nothing 
could better vitalize the soil, so to speak, than by 
exposing it to solar, atmospheric and electrical 
influences in this manner ; and no better method 
could be devised to renovate and render productive 
old worn out lands— rendered so by the unhygi- 
enic, unnatural and destructive method of farming 
in vogue. 

Other crops may be managed in a similar manner. 
Indian corn, where this cereal is indigenous, may 
be plowed and planted in all respects the same as 
potatoes, except that the drills or ridges may not 
be so wide. The seed corn may also, if preferred, 
be dropped after the plow instead of before it. 
But it should not be thrown together in groups, as 
is customary ; but the kernels should be planted 
singly, at distances of about twelve inches 



7^ The Potato Book. 

apart. Corn can be sown in this manner by 
macbinery. 

Potatoes may also be planted after the plow, 
and sometimes it may be the better way. 



ERROR 7. 

E:x:c:e:ssiv:e3 covdei^hn'o-. 

Smotbering the potato by over-covering it is also 
one of the evils of the common method of planting 
it. Heaping too much earth on the seed, even 
when planted on the surface of the ground, instead 
of in the furrow, hinders a speedy development of 
the shoot, prevents a rapid growth, retards ma- 
turity, impairs the quality, and diminishes the 
yield. It is also among the predisposing causes 
of disease. 



The Potato Book. 79 

HEMEDY 7. 

Two or three inches of earth, and sometimes 
even less, accordhig to the moisture or dryness of 
the soil, are quite sufficient. The more moist the 
ground is, the less covering the potatoes should 
have : the danger is ever on the side of excess in 
lands so constituted as to retain a large amount of 
moisture. 

The principal objects of covering the potatoes 
with earth are, to obtain and maintain both heat 
and moisture in due proportion, without exposing 
the seed to light and au\ If buried too deep, the 
moisture and cold will prevail ; while, if too near 
the surface, the moisture may be deficient and the 
heat excessive. 

Freedom from grass and weeds is ever an indis- 
pensable requisite to a perfect crop. Potatoes 
should never be planted under the shade of trees 
or high fences. Nothing should obstruct the free 
play, upon the growing plant, of air and light, of 
winds, sun^ moon, and stars. :_. 



8o The Potato Book. 

To the cultivation of the sweet -potato this 
method is equally appHcable in all respects, both 
in producing the best possible crop, and in prevent- 
ing and curing its diseases. 

[The remarks of an eminent scientist on the 
subject of the influence of the sun and Hght in 
the process of germination, are pertinent here, 
and confirmatory of Dr. McLaurin's views. I 
cannot, however, regard the influence of the sun 
as " chemical " action. Chemical action and vital 
action are antagonistic ideas. There is no che- 
mistry in living structures. Chemical action 
means the combination and separation of elements 
— ^nothing more, nothing less. Vital action is 
transformation and disintegration — very different 
processes. Chemical action arranges primary 
atoms or elements into combinations which are 
capable of decomposition, by which the primary 
atoms or simple elements are restored. Nothing 
like this occurs in the domain of organic life. 
Living organism, by the various nutritive processes, 



The Potato Book. 8 1 

transforms food into tissues, structures, and 
organs. These cannot be separated or decomposed 
chemically, nor can chemical analysis ever tell us 
what their composition is, for the reason that 
vitahty ends before chemistry begins. They are 
only retro-transformed (disintegrated) into the 
various excretions. Chemistry will never solve 
the problems of life, although it may aid us in 
understanding the substances which living organ- 
isms use in the construction and replenishment 
of their bodies, and help us to provide the requisite 
conditions for the proper performance of all 
vital functions. Our author, however, expresses 
the current opinion on this subject. He says : 

" Upon the chemical influence of the sun's rays 
depends the germination of seeds as well as the 
growth of the plants. We bury the seed in the 
groimd and shut it out from the influence of light, 
but we do not place it beyond the reach of the 
sun's actinic influence, for that penetrates like 
heat to the little earthy couch were the embryo 

plant lies hid, and arouses it into life. Light, or 
6 • 



82 The Potato Book. 

the luminiferous rays of the sun, so important to 
the well being of the plant, is actually inimical to 
the excitation of vitality in the seed. How 
singular is this fact ! A series of carefully con- 
ducted experiments has proved that seeds will not 
germinate in light, although supplied with heat 
and moisture, when the actinic rays are cut off. 
Deprived of the luminous rays with the actinic 
in full force, they spring into life with great 
rapidity. Seeds sown upon the surface of the 
earth will scarcely germinate, as soil cultivators 
very well know, and, on the other hand, seeds 
buried so deep that the actinic rays cannot reach 
them will certainly perish. The planting of seeds, 
so as to secure the proper distance below the 
surface, is a most important point in husbandry, 
as it has much to do with the early starting of the 
plant and the success of the crops." — R. T. T.] 



The Potato Book. 83 



DIGaiNa POTATOES. 



The manner of digging potatoes must be left to 
the machinery of inventive genius : but the time 
for digging must be determined by physiological 
laws, demonstrated by actual experiment. 
- [Twenty or thirty potato-diggers have been 
invented and patented, some of which are more or 
less useful. Most of them, however, only throw 
the tubers out of the ground, leaving them to be 
picked up by hand, as usual. One or two have 
been constructed and used to some extent, which 
gather as well as dig them. But they are too 
heavy and expensive for general use, if indeed they 
are profitable at all. But I believe the desiderata 
in machinery is at last attained, in a new " Potato 
Digger and Gatherer," invented principally by Mr. 
G. N. Kilbourne. A model was on exhibition at 
the late fair of the American Institute, in New 



84 The Potato Book. 

York, and elicited universal approbation. A 
working model has also been tested satisfactorily. 
This machine is about the size and weight of an 
ordinary one horse cart, and can be easily operated 
with a span of horses and driver. It takes the 
potatoes from the ground, raises and sifts them 
on a revolving elevator, and deposits them in a 
box under the rear part of the machine. It is 
provided with an adjustable plow, which can be 
elevated or depressed at will, according to the 
depth of the hills, and a lever, by which the rider 
and driver can empty the box when fiUed. It 
has also a circular rake or harrow in front, which 
removes the vines. It will operate equally well 
with Irish or sweet potatoes. The machine wiU 
be in market iu time for the next potato-diggiag 
season, and will not cost to exceed one hundred 
dollars ; and as one machine will do the digging 
for a dozen farmers (unless their potato fields 
are immense), the expense can be no objection. 
— E. T. T.] 

From planting to cookiug, and iu all processes 



The Potato Book. 85 

between and inclusive, potatoes are unquestionably 
the most abused things ever cultivated for human 
use ; and in the long catalogue of errors peculiar to 
this excellent esculent, one of the most outrageous 
is, neglecting to harvest them as soon as they are 
ripe. No other crop was ever maltreated in this 
way. When any other crop is fully matured, the 
farmer secures it at once, lest it wastes and decays. 
But potatoes, being out of sight, are out of mind 
until a convenient season. When the farmer can 
find nothing else to do he digs them, and then 
perhaps complains of them for being of bad 
character. Any other crop would be as bad or 
worse if treated in a similar manner. 

Potatoes are not unfrequently left in the groimd 
several weeks after being ripe, as though they 
were dead stones and undamageable, instead of 
living, perishable organisms, subject to all the 
conditions, changes, transformations, and diseases 
that pertain to all vital structures. 

It is seldom that potatoes are not more or less 
damaged by neglect to harvest at the proper 



S6 The Potato Book. 

time, or by improper management in harvesting, 
however well they may have been raised and 
matured. 

"When the tops of potato plants wither, the tubers 
are ripe, and, like other crops, will be injured if 
not at once gathered and taken care of. If 
allowed to be once soaked in the ground by a 
severe or prolonged rain, after ripening, they lose 
irreparably some degree of their sweet flavor, and 
some portion of their nutrient properties. Nor 
are they so sound and vital for seed-potatoes ; 
and every rain augments the damage, rendering 
them both less palatable and less wholesome. 

What farmer can be ignorant of the fact that 
the potatoes he digs in Noyember and December 
are less dry and sweet than those he ate from the 
same field in September and October previoiisly ? 

Potatoes should not be exposed to the air, sun, 
or wind to dry them, as is customary, after being 
dug. If moist or dirty when taken from the 
ground, cleaning and drying does not protect 
them, but the reverse. Every pQtato that becomes 



"" The Potato Book. 8/ 

uncovered before it is ripe, or wliicli protrudes 
above its earthy covering, soon becomes blighted 
in the exposed part — a fact which proves that it 
is defenceless against aerial elements, and its need, 
when dug, of immediate protection. 

[Dr. McLaurin's remarks on this subject are 
corroborated by Mr. Compton in his Prize Essay, 
previously alluded to, in the following strong 
language : "Potatoes should be picked up as 
soon and as fast as dug ; and immediately covered 
with straw or other material to protect them 
from the light. A few hours' strong sunshine will 
ruin the best potato ever grown. Light changes 
the natural color to green, and renders the potato 
so bitter and unpalatable as to be wholly unfit 
to eat." Those who will take pains to observe 
the truck farmers for the New York and Phila- 
delphia markets, in the potato-digging season, 
will learn that a practice obtains the very opposite 
of that insisted on by *Dr. McLaurin and Mr. 
Compton. As a rule, the potatoes, aiter being 
dug, are exposed several hours to the sun, and in 



88 The Potato Book, 

some cases they are left on the ground during the 
night. After being dried, and more or less in- 
juriously heated, and to some extent blighted, 
they are gathered into baskets. The next day, or 
possibly several days thereafter, they are sent to 
the cities. They are constantly exposed in 
transitu to light, and often to sunshine. Some- 
times they are piled up in huge heaps near the 
boiler of the steamer which carries them to town, 
where the blighting, if not rotting process already 
engendered, is further aggravated. In the mar- 
kets, and at the groceries, they are continually 
exposed to Hght, and not unfrequently they 
remain for hours in barrels, baskets, or smaller 
measures, exposed to the hot rays of a midsum- 
mer's sun. When those potatoes reach the 
consumer they are very far from being potatoes as 
they should be. They have lost more than one 
half of their nutritive value, and more than that 
proportion of natural flavor. No wonder potatoes 
have come to be so generally regarded as a desi- 
rable accompaniment of other food, rather than 



The Potato Book. 89 

as food themselves. No wonder tliat such im- 
mense quantities of grease, butter, and salt, are 
required to render them palatable. I doubt if 
one person in a hundred knows what the natural 
taste of a potato really is. — E. T. T.] 

To secure and preserve potatoes sound, fresh, 
and unsprouted, the one great principle of thorough 
protection from atmospheric influences must be 
rigidly maintained. This principle applies alike 
to sun, light, heat, air, rain, and frost. They must 
also be kept by themselves in closed cellars or bins, 
or in an underground pit or root-house, with a 
top-hatch to receive them, and a small side door 
underneath to admit of their being taken out. 
This door must be kept constantly closed except 
when the potatoes are being put in or taken out. 

A thermometer placed within the bin for ten 
minutes will show the temperature, which should 
not be allowed to fall below thirty-three degrees 
Fahrenheit, nor to rise above fifty degrees. The 
more constantly the temperature is maintained at 



90 The Potato Book. 

about forty degrees the better. In this manner 
they may be kept sound and unsprouted through 
the whole summer season. 

Cabbages, carrots^ turnips, beets, onions, and 
parsnips grow with their bodies partially exposed 
to air and light, and when ripe, cannot bear 
entire seclusion from air without rotting. Potato 
tops grows similarly, and no vine is more tender, 
nor more easily affected by frost and mildew. 
Equally is the tuber affected through its medium, 
the top, until it ceases growing, when the entire 
exclusion of all atmospheric elements becomes 
essential to its proper preservation. Like the 
habitation of the blind mole whose normal state is 
total darkness, the cellar, bin -pit, or earth-covered 
and airless cave, is the natural home of the potato. 
Those who expose their potatoes unnecessarily to 
air, light, and sunshine, know little of the injuri- 
ous consequences. No food can long be exposed 
to oxygen without more or less injury ; but the 
potato, both because of its constitutional nature 



The Potato Book. 9^ 

and its underground Ifiobitat, is remarkably sus- 
ceptible to its deleterious influence. 

Some retail dealers, with the best intentions, 
wash their potatoes, besides exposing them con- 
stantly to the air, a practice damaging to their 
quaUty and conducive to decay. But as potatoes 
so treated and exposed, are usually soon disposed 
of, the dealer does not notice the difference in 
quality between them and those which have been 
properly kept and protected. 

If some one would try the experunent of cooking 
some potatoes which have been exposed to air and 
light for a month or two in a huckster's shop, and 
compare them with others taken immediately from 
the cellar to the cook, he would then be prepared 
to appreciate the difference between a good and a 
bad article of food. 

But, bad as is the influence of atmospheric air 
on the quaUty of the potato, that of the sun is stiU 
worse. Potatoes which have been long exposed 
to sunshine are actuaUy dangerous to health, and 
should never be planted, eaten, bought, nor sold. 



92 The Potato Book. 

Nor should long, scraggy, broken or sprouted 
potatoes be eaten or planted. 

Hucksters may bin a barrel of potatoes for a 
short time, except where they are liable to freeze, 
for transportation or temporary convenience ; but 
even then they should cover them, or place them 
in the cellar during the night. In transporting 
them long distances the same rules for protecting 
them should be appHed, so far as possible under 
the circumstances. 



cooismsro- i=ot-a.toe3s. 

With the majority, perhaps nine-tenths of 
*tnankind, who "live to eat " instead of " eating to 
live," the question is not how to cook potatoes in 
order to obtain from them the best nutrition — ^the 
best material for blood-making, bone -making, 
muscle-making, nerve-making, and brain-making — • 
but how to cook them so as to gratify perverted 
instincts and depraved appetences, or how to 



The Potato Book. 93 

follow most slavishly tlie prevailing fashion. 
Only the true and practical hygienist, who culti- 
vates the potato and preserves it in accordance 
with the laws of its organization, and then cooks 
it according to hygienic rules, can know its 
real value as an article of food. 

Of the woman who steeped her first pound of 
imported tea, it is said that she rejected the juice, 
and to make up for the lost strength and flavor, 
served up the sapless and insipid leaves with butter, 
pepper and salt. With equal wonder will it some 
time in the future be told that, ever since the 
importation of the potato into Europe, it has been 
treated by most people in a similar manner. 

Although tea and potatoes differ very greatly in 
kind — one being innutritions if not poisonous, and 
the other nutritive and wholesome — ^they are alike 
in organic conditions and elementary arrange- 
ments. Boiling out the juice of potatoes, and its 
contained elements — nutritive matters held in 
solution — and throwing away one-third part 
(more or less) of their alimentary principle, is as 



94 The Potato Book. 

absurd as to steep the tea, throw away the water, 
and eat the leaves. The materials which are 
soluble in hot water, and which are removed by 
the process of boihng, are as essential to perfect 
nutrition as are the more solid portions ; and no 
condiments nor seasoning can substitute that 
which has been thus lost. 

"When apples are boiled for sauce, the juice is 
never rejected. Why then throw away the juice 
of boiled or mashed potatoes ? The one being a 
fruit and the other a root does not alter the prin- 
ciple in the least. The juice of aU things that 
grow, and are proper articles for animal or human 
sustenance, is as much food as are the solid 
constituents. It is the product as a whole that 
constitutes pure and perfect food, no one element, 
whether organized into structure, or floating in 
solution (a constituent of its vital fluid) can be 
abstracted without lessening the nutritive value of 
the remaining portion. Indeed, the remainder is 
not food at all in the physiological sense. 

During the great famines which have occurred in 



The Potato Book. 95 

Ireland no less than four times in consequence of 
the failure of the potato crop, the deaths of 
starvation were more numerous because the 
potatoes, which constituted sometimes the whole 
dietary material, had their nourishing properties 
impaired by boiling. Paul warned Timothy 
against old wives' fables. That potato-juice is 
poisonous, is among the fables that may excuse 
its rejection, without rendering the practice of 
rejecting it any the less injurious. 

The excellence of Irish and Scotch potato-soups 
is attributable to the fact that none of the natural 
ingredients, solid or liquid, are wasted in cooking. 
No more wholesome food exists than potatoes 
baked, steamed, or boiled, provided that when 
boiled the juice be all saved (and not too much 
condensed) and mashed with them. 

[The laudation bestowed upon the potato as 
food, and the superior merit claimed for this 
method of cooking it, may seem extravagant to 
those who do not appreciate the principle involved. 



96 The Potato Book. 

But they liave only to try the experiment fairly to 
be convinced that Dr. McLaurin does not exag- 
gerate in this matter. I have myself many times 
cooked potatoes in their own fluid, and I know 
they are always sweeter, dryer, richer, and. more 
satisfactory to the stomach, than when cooked by 
any other method. I have made many a whole 
meal of them and nothing else ; and if I were to 
judge from personal experience and observation, I 
should say their nutritive value was more than 
doubled. And this, in a country consuming 
150,000,000 of bushels as food annually, is no 
small item on the score of economy alone. But, 
on the score of health, its importance is still 
greater. This one recipe alone is of more value 
to the human race than all the lectures and books 
Professor Blot has ever spoken or written. — 
B. T. T.] 



The Potato Book, 97 



Potatoes may be cooked- in many ways health- 
fully, in accordance with the one principle above 
indicated. Whether boiled, baked, or steamed, 
no constituent originally contained in them 
should be extracted and wasted : nor should it be 
destroyed, dissipated, changed, or lost by over- 
cooking. 

One example of proper cooking may serve as a 
rule for all processes : Wash the potatoes 
thoroughly, but quickly. The shorter time they 
are in the water the better. They should be 
cooked in a tight-lidded, untinned, metal sauce- 
pan ; and it is better to have the lid of the 
sauce-pan of the same metal as the vessel. Place 
this over the fire without water ^ as for boiling, the 
fire being an ordinary one. 

To ascertain whether they are done, take the 
vessel off the fire, and quickly raise the lid. If 

not sufficiently cooked, return the vessel quickly 

7 



98 The Potato Book. 

to the fire. When done, remove them at once 
from the vessel. 

It is better to have the vessel about two-thirds 
filled with potatoes ; hence the vessel employed 
should be of a size adapted to the quantity to be 
cooked. About three-fourths of the bulk and 
weight of potatoes are water. This quantity of 
fluid is ample for producing all the steam required 
to cook them. Steam is hotter than boiling water, 
cooks the potatoes quickly, and renders them dry, 
rich, and luscious. Good cooks will neither burn 
the food nor injure the vessel. 

[Potato-soup, made in the manner proposed by 
Dr. McLaurin, is one of the favorite dishes in my 
institution for invalids. I never knew a person, 
sick or well, to dislike it ; and the majority are 
extremely fond of it the first time they taste of 
it, even when coming from an ordinary hotel or 
boarding-house dietary, where almost everything 
is highly seasoned, to simple fare without any 
seasoning at all. — K. T. T.] 



The Potato Book. 99 

Steaming vegetables with pealed potatoes 
mingles the strength and flavor of all, and affords 
a palatable meal for sound stomachs and normal 
appetites. But as potatoes are the soonest 
cooked, they should be removed before the vege- 
tables are done, or else not added until the vege- 
tables have been cooking for a time. 

If potatoes are steamed to be mashed, milk may- 
be added to soften them, for those who use milk ; 
but to persons to whom milk is objectionable, 
gruel, or some juicy liquid, is preferable, as well as 
more hygienic. 

When potatoes are boiled to be mashed, it is 
important to have the proper quantity of water, 
as excess or deficiency injures both quality and 
flavor. 

A meal of potatoes may be prepared in a few 
minutes by peeling them, slicing them: very fine, 
putting them in a frying-pan, covered so as to 
retain the steam, and placing them over a fire hot 
enough to cook without burning them. They 
should be cooked in about ten minutes. 



100 The Potato Book. 

Steaming potatoes over water, or by tlie vapor 
of water, prevents the due abstraction of the water 
contained in them, which abstraction is absolutely- 
necessary in order to render them rich and savory, 
as they should be. Each potato has sufficient 
water to generate the steam necessary for cooking 
it, and needs no extraneous supply. 

Baking potatoes is not excelled by any other 
method of cooking, when it is properly performed. 
But the common mode overcooks some parts of 
them, and burns other parts to cinders, even when 
they are not further damaged by being greased. 
To these objections steam-cooking is not liable.. 

The common practice of frying sliced potatoes 
in butter or lard, or in grease of any kind, is one 
of the dietetic abominations that needs only to be 
mentioned to be condemned. It is among the 
many causes of dyspeptic stomachs and disordered 

livers. 

A large proportion — indeed, much the greater 
portion — of nearly all kinds of food are spoiled by 
the fashionable processes of cooking and modes of 



The Potato Book. loi 

seasoning, intended to please depraved tastes, 
pander to morbid stomaclis, and imitate fashion- 
able ways. And food wbich is intrinsically whole- 
some, palatable, and even delicious to unperverted 
tastes, may be distasteful and even repulsive to 
those whose organic instincts and perceptivities 
have become diseased and abnormal. Such 
persons will never know the pleasures afforded by 
pure food and good digestion, until by a perse- 
vering use of natural food naturally cooked, and 
eaten without unnatural admixtures or additions, 
their appetences are restored to a state of nature. 
In conclusion, the author adds the beautiful 
little poem on the next page, lately published, of 
which Robert Bums is the reputed author. 



102 The Potato Book. 

TO THE POTATO. 

Guid e'en, my auld acquintance cronie ! 
I'm glad to see thee bloom sae bonie ; 
Of fruits and flowers there is nae monie, 

Can match wi thee ; 
I question much if there be onie, 

At least to me. 

It's now twa months since ye've been wi us, 
As soon's ye can, come in and see us ; 
Ye'll banish poverty quite frae us, 

The time ye stay ; 
And trowth, I hope ye winna lea us, 

TiU Whitsunday. 

I'll mak my braw young bouncing wencher 
Place thee upon a bowl or trencher, 
Wi floods of milk as deep as stincher, 

In case I had it ; 
I'll show thee fairly I'm no fincher, 

When once I said it. 

Ye're now the poor folks' bread and scon. 
And hungry meals ye gar stun yon, 
Frae me, to him wha fills the throne 

O happy Britain ; 
Baith young and auld, man, wife, and wean. 

Ye had them eatin. 



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ology, Physiognomy, Ethnology, Psychology, Physiology, Anatomy, 
Hygiene, Dietetics, etc., supplied. Enclose stamp for Wholesale Terms 
to Agents. Address S. R. Wells, 389 Broadway, New York. 



V/orks on Physiology and Hygiene. 

[It. has been said that, a man at Forty Years o Age, is either a " Physician or a Fool." 
That at this Age, he ought to know how to treat, and take care of him.'=elf. These 
Works are intended to give instruction on -'How to Live." How to avoid Diseases 
and of Premature Decay. They are practical, adapted to both People and Profession.] 



\natoinical and Phyi^iolonrical 

Plates Arranged expt essly for Lectures 
on Health, Physiology, etc. By R. T. 
Trail. M. D. They are six in number, 
representing the normal position and 
life-size of all the internal viscera, mag- 
nified illustrations of the organs of the 
special senses, and a view of the nerves, 
arteries, veins, muscles, etc. Fully col- 
ored, backed, and mounted on rollers. 
Price for the set, net $20. 

Avoidable Causes of Disease, 
Insanity, and Deformity, including 
Marriage and its Violations. By Dr. 
John Ellis. .$2. 

Children, their Management in Healtli 
and Disease. A Descriptive and Practi- 
cal Work. By Dr. Shew. $1.75. 

Diseases of tlie Throat and 
Lungs. With Treatment. '25 cents. 

Xoniestic Practice of Hydro- 
pathy, with a form of a Report for the 
assistance of Patients in consulting their 
Physicians. By E. Johnson, M. D. sfS. 

Family OyniuaMiuin. Containing 
the most improved methods of applying 
Gymnastic. Talisthenic, Kinesipathic, 
and Vocal Exercises, to the Develop- 
ment of the Bodily Organs. By. Dr. 
TralL Many Illustrations. $1.75. 



Food and I>Jet. With observations 
on the Dietical Ue^imen suited for Dis- 
ordered States of tne Digestive Orsrans. 
Dietaries of the Principal Metropolitan 
Establishments for Lunatics, Criminals, 
Children, the Sick, Paupers, etc. A 
thorough scientific Work. By Jonathan 
Pereira, M. D.. F. R. S. and L. S. Edited 
by Charles A. Lee, M. D. $1.75. 

Fruits and Farinacea, the 

Proper Food of Man. Vegetarian. By 
John Smith. With Notes and Illustra- 
tions. By R. T. Trail, M.D. Muslin, $1.75. 

Hydropathic Cook Boole. With 
Recipes for Cooking on Hygienic Princi- 
ples. By Dr. Trail. $1.50. 

Hydropathic Encyclopedia. A 

System of Hydropathy and Hygiene. 
Embracing Outlines of Anatomy ; Phy- 
siology ot the Human Body ; Hygienic 
Agencies, and the Preservation of 
Health ; Theory and Practice ; Special 
Pathology, including the Nature, Causes, 
Symptoms, and Treatment of all known 
Diseases. Designed as a Guide to Fami 
lies and Students, and a Test- Hook for 
Physicians. By li. T. Trail. M.D. $4.50. 
The most complete Work on tlie subject 



Faikiily Pliysician. A Ready Pres- 
criber and Hygien .c Adviser. With Kef- 
erence to tlie Nature, Causes, Preven- 
tion, aud Treatment of Diseases, Acci- 
dents, and casualties of every kind. 
With a Glossary, and Copious Inues. 
By Joel :Sh: v. M. D. Muslin, ij 4. 

OTanas:ement of Infancy, Pbysio- 
lofjical and Moral Treatment. By An- 
drew Combe, M. D. With Notes and a 
tjupplementary Chapter. Muslin, $1.50. 

1 Midwifery and llie Diseases of 

' Women. A Descriptive and Practical 
Work. With tht general manajrement 
of Child Birth, Nursery, etc. $1.75. 

Ifloveineiit-Curc. An Exposition of 
the Swedish Movement-Cure. Embrac- 
ing: the History aud Philosophy of this 
System of Medical Treatment, vith Ex- 
amples of Movements, and Diret ions for 
their Use in V^arious Forms of Chronic 
Diseases. Illustrated. By George H. 
Taylor, M. D. Muslin, $1.75. 

Notes on Beauty, Viffor and De- 

VELOPMENT ; Or, How to Acquire Plump- 
ness of Form, Strength of Limb, and 
Beauty of Complexion. 12 cents. 

Pliyslolojry of Digestion. Con- 
sidered witii relation to the Principles 
ofDie+etics. Hy Andrew Combe, D.M. 
Illustrated. 50 cents. 

l»IilIoso|)ijy of tlie Water-Cure. 

A Development of the true Principles of 
Health and Longevity. By John Balbir- 
nie, M.D. 50 cents. 

Practice of tlie Water Cure. Con- 
taining a Detailed account of the various 
Baiting processes. 50 cents. 

Physiolog-y, Animal and Mental: 

Applied to the Preservation and Restor- 
ation of Health of Body and Power of 
Mind. Illustrated. Muslin, $1.50. 



Principles of Physiolog-y applied to 
the Preservation of Health and to the 
Improvement of Physical and Mental 
Education. By Andrew Combe. ^1.75. 

Science of Human Life, Lect ares on 
THK. By Sylvester Graham. With a 
copious Index and Biographical Sketch, 
of the Author. Illustrated. $3.50. 

Sober and Temperate Life. The Dis 
courses and Letters of Louis Cornaro. 
AVith a Biography of the Author, who 
died at 150 years of age. 50 cents. 

Tea and Coffee, their Physical. Intel- 
lectual, and Moral Effects on the System. 
By Dr. Alcott, 25 cents. 

The Alcoholic Controversy. A Ee- 

view of the Westndnster Eevieio on the 



Physiological Errors of Teetotalism. 
Dr. Trail. 50 cents. 



By 



The Story of a Stomach. By .a Re- 
formed Dyspeptic. Paper, 50 cents ; 
muslin, 75 cents. 

Three Hours' School a Day. A Seri- 
ous Talk with Parents. By William L. 
Crandal. Muslin, $1.50. 

"Water-Cure in Chronic Diseases. 

An Exposition of the Causes, Progress 
and Terminations of Various Chronic 
Diseases of the Digestive Organs. I.imgs, 
Nerves, and Skin, and of their Treat- 
ment. With engraved View oi the Lungs, 
Heart, Stomach, and Bowels. By J. M. 
GuUy, M.D. $2. 



" A Special List " of 70 or more Privato 
Medical, Surgical and Anatomical Works, 
invaluable to those who need them, sent 
on receipt of stamp. Address S. R. "Wells, 
8S9 Broadway, New York. 



The Reader will greatly oblige by exliibiting this Catalogue to a 
neighbor, who would, perhaps, be glad to procure some of the Works ; 
or, would like to become a subscriber to the Illustrated Phrenologi- 
cal Journal, or engage in the sale of these publications. 



Works for Home Improvement. 

This List embraces just such Works as are suited' to every member of the family- 
old and young. These Works will serve as guides in Self-Improvement, and are almost 
indispensable to those who have not the advantages of a liberal education. 



Aims and Aids for Girls and Youn^ 
Women, on the various Duties of Life, 
Physical, Intellectual, and Moral, Self- 
Culture, Improvement. Dress, Beauty, 
Employment, the Home Relations, Du- 
ties to Youi)^ Men, Marriage, Woman- 
hood, aud Happiness. By 'Rev. G. S. 
Weaver. Muslin, $1.50. 



iEsop's Fables. The People's Pictorial 
Edition. Beautifully illustrated with 
nearly Sixty Engravings. Cloth, gilt, 
beveled boards. Only $1. 

Benny. An Illustrated Poem. By Anna 
Chambers Ketchum. Published in the 
elegant style of Enoch Arden. A beauti 
fti- Christmas present. $1.53. 



HYGEIAN HOME, 
FLORENCE HiaHT8, N. J. 

Consulting Physicians. Associate Pkysiciam 

H. T. TRALL, M.D., ) JAMES FORAN, M.D. ) 

MARY A. BUTTS, M.D.,) m. E. BALL, M.D. 

MRS. HARRIET M. FORAN, M.D. ) , . 
MISS SARAH FULLER, M.D. } Ansistants. 

This model Health Institution is beautifully situated on the east 
■bank of the Delaware River, between Trenton and Philadelphia. The 
main building is two hundred and fifty feet in. length, four stories 
high ; its rooms are large and pleasant, and it is a?auriclantly suppUed 
with 

PURE SOFT WATER FROM LIVING Sr-^iNGS. 
A broad verandah, the entire length of the building, wm^ ample 
fields, and a grove extending a mile along the river, afford ^i\ ^he 
facilities for xjromenading that can be desired. 

All curalAe diseases are successfully treated without drug-naedieiue.. 
Send stamp for circular. 

Pyigicnir JfamilD ScIxooL 

A department of Hygoian Home is devoted to a Boarding School, 
where children can be taught all of the primary branches, music, kc, 
and have their health properly cared for. 

Terms. — $20 per month, or $200 per year. 

^Ijrlatrelpbta Pggtemt frxstttute. 

NO. 1 516 CHESTNUT STREET. 

R. T. TRALL. M.D., ) 

MRS. E. S. CHOATE, M.D., [ Physicians. 

JOSEPH WILLIAMS, M.D., ) 

Patients visited, and, when practicable, treated at their residences. 
The Physicians will respond to calls to lecture in city or country. 

Jycicio-Sljerapcuttt Collegia. 

The regular lecture terms commence in the middle of 
November in each year, and continue twenty weeks. This school is 
chartered by the Legislature, and legally authorized to confer the 
degree of M.D. La:dies and gentlemen are admitted on precisely 
equal terms. 

Tebms.— Lecture Fees, $100 ; Graduation Fee, $30. After the first 
term, students or physicians may attend any subsequent term on the 
payment of $10. 

The Honorary Degree of the College wiU be conferred on properly 
qualified persons who cannot attend the lectures, on the payment of 
the diploma fee of $30. 

College Facultj^ and Teachers. 

R. T. TRALL, W-J)., Institutes of Medicine, Pathology and Therapeutics. 
O. T. LI'-jES, M.D., Anatomy and Surgery. 
SUSANNAH W. DODDS, M.D., Physiology and Obstetrics. 
JAMES FORAN, M.D., Phrenology and Mental Science. 
R. T. TRALL, JR., M.D., Music and Gymnastics. 
M. E. BALL. M.D., Natural Philosophy. 
JOHN A. RYDER, M.D. , Chemistry and Hygienic Agriculture. 
For further information address, 

E. T. TRALL, M.D., PRINCIPAL. 



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